


The Darkest Timeline

by flaming_muse



Category: Glee
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Ass Play, Barebacking, Blow Jobs, Coercion, Dirty Talk, Emotional Manipulation, Guilt, Hand Jobs, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Obsession, Orgasm Delay, Prostate Massage, Rimming, Rough Sex, Sexual Coercion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-02-03 07:43:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12744015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flaming_muse/pseuds/flaming_muse
Summary: What if Dave Karofsky had other reasons for dating Blaine than just simple affection?An alternate Blaine/Dave relationship, starting in the summer before season 6 and running parallel through 6x05 ("The Hurt Locker, Part 2").





	The Darkest Timeline

**Author's Note:**

> **This fic is filled with coercive sex, rough sex, manipulation, obsession, and more. Please read the warnings and tags. Feel free to message me (flaming.muse at g mail or flamingmuse on tumblr) if you’d like to know more to feel safe before you read. You matter!**
> 
> I wrote most of this fic during season six, when I got to thinking about how the Blaine/Dave relationship would have looked in a show that was darker and grittier. It was actually a pretty positive experience for Blaine in canon, but as I watched I kept playing with this idea of a more twisted reason that Dave Karofsky was dating Blaine. What if he hadn’t changed as much as Kurt and Blaine thought he had? What if it wasn’t honest affection for Blaine that was driving him? What if the relationship wasn’t good for Blaine after all? The concept wouldn’t let me go. Ultimately I wrote it to get it out of my head.
> 
> I’ve been sitting on this fic for quite a while now. It was about 95% finished before Glee was even over. It isn’t my usual fare, and it’s a pairing that had a lot of people riled up at the time, so I decided to tuck it away in my WIP folder instead of figuring out if I wanted to share it. Then I forgot about it. I think now - I hope, anyway - the drama of canon is enough behind us that people can choose to read this fic or not and not freak out about the thought of it.
> 
> It is NOT the kind of fic I usually write in the Glee fandom. It is not properly canonical, though it mirrors season six from the summer before it starts through 6x05 (“The Hurt Locker: Part 2”). It is dark, for sure. It’s unhappy. It is full of coercion and manipulation. The sex is often not healthy, smart, or kind. Neither is the relationship between Blaine and Dave. Kurt does not appear in person in this fic, but he’s certainly present in their world.
> 
> For those of you missing my regular sorts of fic, I’m dusting off more Klaine WIPs as we speak.
> 
> The title comes from _Community_ and its darkest timeline conceit, although no goatees were involved (or harmed) in the making of this fic.

It starts with a single, seemingly innocent question.

“How did you get to be so fucking good at giving head?” Dave asks, his voice a husky, pleasure-drunk rasp.

On his knees, Blaine drags his mouth up off Dave’s dick, leaving it flushed red and slippery with his spit right in front of him, and he grins as he looks up at his new boyfriend sitting sprawled on the couch with his pants pushed down to his knees. He loves the look of rapt, greedy awe on Dave’s face. It goes straight to his gut, straight to his heart.

“Lots of practice,” Blaine says, licking around the spongy head with a distinct sense of pride. It's thick against his tongue, full and eager. "And I like it." He knows he’s good at it, but he can’t help but feeling a thrill at hearing it from someone who wants it from him, some who wants _him_.

Dave slides his fingers into Blaine’s hair and urges him down, groaning as Blaine slips his mouth around him and takes him in. He pants as Blaine works him with his tongue, chasing every gasp and groan and tightening of Dave’s grip on him, every sure sign of pleasure.

His eyes shut and his hips hitching with the bob of Blaine’s head, Dave says, “I don’t know how Kurt ever let you go if he was getting this every day. Fuck.”

Blaine grunts around the thick dick in his mouth, not quite sure if he can agree but appreciative of the approval.

Dave’s hand in his hair stills Blaine, holds him down, Blaine's lips spread wide and his breathing forced and shallow. Blaine is surprised by the pressure but doesn’t struggle against the almost overwhelming feeling of the head of Dave’s cock nudging against his throat. He’s not used to being held in place this way, but he knows he has to get used to new things, because what he was used to - with Kurt - is gone.

"Yeah, yeah, your mouth was made for dick," Dave groans.

Blaine barely breathes as Dave keeps him there, just swallows and breathes where he can and lets him hold him still, his hands gripping Dave’s thighs as Dave’s cock throbs deep in his mouth, barely moving, barely fucking in, just filling him up so far his eyes water and his jaw twinges. Blaine lets Dave have what he needs, what he likes, whatever Blaine can do to make him feel good.

“Show me,” Dave says finally. He lets go, lets his hands fall away. “Show me how he likes it.”

Blaine pulls back, questioning, and meets Dave’s heavy-lidded eyes. Uncertainty swirls in his gut as he swallows and clears his throat.

“You remember how he liked you to get him off, before he was so stupid to decide he didn’t want you at all,” Dave says, speaking gently but watching him with sharp eyes. “I want you to show me exactly what he’s missing, Blaine.”

Blaine looks down for a moment, his head bowing with emotion. He doesn’t want to think about Kurt. He doesn’t want to think about what he’s lost. He doesn’t want to _think_ at all.

Dave reaches down to cup his face and tip it back up again. He gives Blaine an encouraging smile. “Only if you want to,” he says. “You know I like everything you do. I just don’t want you to be holding on to memories and feeling you weren’t good enough. I know you are.”

His eyes locked on Dave’s face, Blaine’s tension slowly bleeds out of him. Dave’s right. If he keeps Kurt’s memory up on a pedestal, he’s just going to feel worse about it. He knows that. He knows he needs to move beyond him, prove that even if their relationship failed, even if Blaine wasn't perfect, he still did a lot of things just right.

Kurt might not have loved _Blaine_ enough, but he _did_ love his blowjobs. Blaine is sure of it.

His shoulders square, and he wraps his hand around Dave’s thick erection. It twitches against his palm, and he strokes it a few times, watching it bead with glossy precome. “He likes it slower than you do,” he says as Dave leans back against the cushions once more, his eyes glittering as they watch Blaine. “Slower and softer, with lots of petting, gentle right up to the end.”

“Show me,” Dave says, and his eyes slide shut as Blaine takes him deep, his hands caressing his thighs and cupping his balls as he works.

It’s different, this new/old rhythm. Less frantic, more intense. It’s a slow coaxing of pleasure, not a rush toward it. Dave isn’t rutting up into Blaine’s mouth, and Blaine’s working harder, low moans coming from his throat as he gets into a rhythm he remembers. He sucks and licks, smooths his hands over his boyfriend’s skin, and lets his broken heart expand and express itself in a way he’s missed so much, not just giving pleasure but gifting it.

Dave doesn’t guide him anymore, just lets him work, shivering and shaking beneath him. “Yeah. Yeah,” he says, his eyes still shut. “That’s what Kurt wants. Fuck. Yeah. That’s so good.”

Blaine moans again, his hands shaking and moisture shimmering at the edges of his eyelashes. He can hear Kurt in his head, too, murmuring his appreciation in his breathy, arousal-filled voice, letting Blaine love him.

Blaine sinks deep around Dave, the cock in his mouth not the same one he remembers but still hard and male and so visibly happy with everything he’s doing. He pushes himself down, swallowing around him, filling up his mouth and his throat and his lungs and his heart and then pulling off and kissing his boyfriend’s thighs and his balls and pretending he doesn’t notice that the skin beneath his mouth doesn’t smell the same as what inhabits his very best memories.

It doesn’t matter. Dave still loves it, and Blaine is hard as rock in his jeans as he goes down on him again.

“That’s it,” Dave tells him, urging him on as Blaine sucks him off with a desperate fervor and a gratitude he doesn’t let himself think about. “Show me exactly what he wants, Blaine. Fuck. Show me _exactly_ what Kurt wants.”

*

“Which side would you like?” Dave asks as he draws back the covers on his bed the first night Blaine stays over.

Blaine stands in the door to Dave’s room with his bare feet peeking out of his matching navy pajama set. He wonders if it’s too formal, if he should have tried to be a little less put together, but Dave seems to like him well enough as he is. Besides, he’s already experimented enough over the past few months with looks that aren’t him. Dave might be a new kind of lover for him, but Blaine still needs to be true to himself.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says with a smile and overcomes his flutter of nerves to make himself step inside; he’s been in Dave’s bedroom before, in his bed, but not overnight. It feels like a declaration, somehow. It’s a new line he’s crossing, a new future he’s creating, not the one he planned but the one he has. “It’s your room.”

“And you’re my guest,” Dave tells him. “I want you to be comfortable.”

His smile growing with gratitude at the care, Blaine walks forward into the room and meets him at the end of the bed. He raises his face for a kiss, lets Dave pull him in with his big hands on his waist, and finally says, “I’m used to sleeping on this side.” He points to the left.

“Then that’s your side,” Dave tells him warmly, his eyes going satisfied.

They turn off the lights and snuggle under the covers, finding the ways their bodies fit in repose for the first time. Dave is so big and broad on the side that used to be Kurt's, and Blaine feels tiny cradled in his arms, his head on Dave’s chest. He feels safe, enveloped, protected, like he doesn’t have to have all of the answers, which is good, because he doesn’t. He knows he doesn’t, but here he doesn’t have to.

“Okay?” Dave asks him, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “Do you like to sleep like this?”

Blaine curls in close, his arm over Dave’s waist. There’s so much more to him than there was to Kurt, but the solid warmth of him makes something deep in Blaine’s chest shake free. “I love to sleep like this,” he says in a small voice. He feels like he could cry, and he’s not sure if it’s with happiness or sadness. “I’ve missed it.”

“You don’t have to anymore,” Dave says soothingly. His hand sweeps up and down Blaine’s back. “I’m here now, right beside you, right where he was. You aren’t alone anymore.”

“Thank you,” Blaine whispers and wishes he weren’t so grateful.

*

“God, your _ass_ ,” Dave says as he grips Blaine’s hips and slides balls-deep into him. There’s not quite enough lube, and he’s big enough that Blaine can feel him against his ass and between his knees and all the way up into his throat. “Fucking god, you feel amazing.”

Blaine pants against his crossed arms, squeezing his eyes shut and shuddering as Dave holds him in place on his knees. He can’t move in his grip, and he feels split open and tight and overwhelmed, his head spinning with it.

“You have the best ass,” Dave tells him. He pushes forward just a little, rocking into him and pressing Blaine’s face against the mattress and making it hard for him to get enough air with the soft bedding fluffling up around his arms.

Blaine moans, not quite with pleasure, but it’s close enough that Dave doesn’t seem to notice, just pulls out a little and drives back into him. Blaine moans again, louder, the sound muffled in the dark cavern of blankets around his face. It’s almost too much, the way Dave is handling him, not waiting for him, just enjoying him.

It’s almost too much, almost not enough about being connected, and Blaine kind of completely _loves_ it.

“Yeah.” Dave curls his hand so that he can palm the globe of Blaine’s ass, squeezing the muscle before pulling him open and sliding back a few inches. “Look at you taking it. Fuck.” He thrusts again, starting up a slow but determined rhythm. “Fuck, Blaine.”

“You can go faster,” Blaine says in a thick voice, and he wishes he could see Dave looking at him taking his dick. He wishes he could see the appreciation on Dave’s face and not just hear it in his words, but he can’t make himself twist around to look up. “It’s okay.”

Dave does, his hips speeding up as he fucks into him, driving forward again and again, big and thick and huge behind him and over him, keeping him in place and holding him down and taking him over.

“Yeah, like that,” Blaine gasps, his fingers curling into the mattress. He’s not fully hard, his dick swinging with each jerk of their bodies, but he moves with the man behind him, catching the rhythm and tilting his hips into him with something like relief. It easy now. He's open, so open.

“You like that? How does that feel?”

Blaine’s head rolls against his arm, his bottom lip caught between his teeth. He shudders as Dave’s balls slap against him and his cock opens him up further. “Good. You’re so big, but it’s... good. I like it. I like big. I like to feel it.”

Dave urges Blaine’s legs further apart - wide enough that Blaine can feel the stretch in his hips and thighs, wide enough that he feels off-balance and out of control and at Dave's mercy - and settling even closer in between them. “You know just how to take it.”

“Yeah,” Blaine moans, his voice shaking. He wants to take it, wants to be wanted so viscerally. His head spins at how little he needs to do, his thoughts a jumble he’s happy not to be able to put together, and he keeps his eyes closed and just lets it happen.

“You were made for this,” Dave says, squeezing his ass cheek again and pulling him back onto his dick. “I bet Kurt loved fucking you like this.”

Blaine’s breath rushes out of him, and not just because of the way Dave’s dick is so deep inside that he can’t breathe around it. “I - “ he gets out, but Dave talks over him.

Dave leans forward over him, one long hand pressing on Blaine’s shoulder to keep him still, keep him face-down with his ass in the air. He fucks into him in sharp, steady jerks, powerful and sweaty and raw. “I bet he still dreams of it,” he grunts out. “I bet he wakes up hard remembering you like this.”

“I don’t - “ Blaine says, a little uncertain, because he doesn’t want to think about Kurt; he doesn’t want to think about anything. His dick starts to thicken beneath him, though, as the bed creaks in time with their bodies.

“I bet he jerks off to you,” Dave says, his words punching out of him with each hard thrust. He’s as deep as he can go, heavy on top of Blaine, a force of nature driving into him. “I bet he thinks of you in his bed and jerks off to you, jerks off to this perfect, round ass that was just meant to take a dick.”

“I - “ Blaine has to free one of his hands to wrap it around his own suddenly straining erection. He keeps his eyes closed, his mind as blank as he can make it. He grips himself tight, just the way he likes it, and strokes himself fast. He feels frantic, trapped beneath his boyfriend and his words and the thick dick in his ass.

He doesn't want to think about Kurt thinking about him, it feels like a betrayal of himself, of Kurt, of Dave, but he can see Kurt in his mind - long limbs and long fingers and long cock and sex-dark eyes looking at Blaine with desire - and Blaine is wide open and being fucked like a machine, and he needs - he needs -

Dave leans down lower, his body slippery with sweat and working hard, huge and powerfully male, driving into Blaine and making him quake with desire. “ _His_ dick. Your ass was meant to take _Kurt’s_ dick, and he still wants it, and I’m fucking you just like he wants to, fuck - “

Grunting, he shudders and jerks, fucking in deep, and Blaine cries out beneath him, unable to get away from his thoughts or the man inside him. Clenching around Dave's dick, Blaine's hand is almost a blur before he loses control altogether and comes in messy spurts across the sheets.

*

Dave mouths a wet kiss against the side of Blaine’s neck as he presses him belly-first against the kitchen counter. “Hey, handsome. I missed you.”

“I’m trying to put these groceries away,” Blaine says with a laugh, but he doesn’t struggle as his boyfriend skims his hands down his sides. He tucks the box of pasta up into the open cabinet in front of him. He’s going to cook for Dave tonight, and he picked up a few staples while he was there to replace what they’ve been using together.

“I know. I saw you bending over to put the detergent under the sink.” Dave slides a hand down over Blaine’s ass to rub it appreciatively, palming it and squeezing through his jeans.

Blaine laughs again and attempts to pull away, reaching for the bag sitting beside him on the floor, but Dave stops him, keeps him there between his body and the counter. The edge bites a little into Blaine’s stomach, and he catches himself on his hands. “Dave... the groceries.”

Dave sucks another kiss along Blaine’s throat, this one harder and more determined. “They can wait.”

“So can you,” Blaine says and tries to step out of his arms again. He likes the way Dave shows such open affection, but he did just get back from the store.

Dave holds his hips and leans over him, bending Blaine’s torso a few inches over the counter and keeping pinned him against the lower cabinets with the weight of his body. “I don’t want to,” he says. “You’re so hot.” He rubs against Blaine’s ass, his dick already hardening in his jeans.

“But - “ Blaine says, his voice a little high and thready. He can feel Dave’s interest hot against him, and his breath catches with a sudden rush of his own arousal, but as much as he likes how Dave takes control in the bedroom he’s not sure how he feels about Dave pushing now.

“Would you say no if I were Kurt?” Dave asks, a low murmur in his ear.

Surprised, Blaine makes a choked-off noise. A shudder goes through him, followed by a sick, churning ooze of shame that makes blood flood into his face. He knows the answer to that question. He can’t lie to himself. He’s said no to Kurt before, or avoided intimacy altogether, but... that’s not quite the question.

“No. You know you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t say no to him if he were the one throwing himself at you,” Dave says, and he sounds hurt. He sounds disappointed.

“I’m sorry,” Blaine says softly, his head bowing over the counter. He can’t blame Dave for being upset. Blaine’s with _him_ , after all. He’s the one he should be saying yes to. He should _want_ to say yes.

He should have always said yes.

Dave reaches for Blaine’s zipper, and Blaine doesn’t stop him. He just breathes out as Dave’s big hand pulls it down and slides inside, palming his dick in his underwear. It feels good, it does.

“I’m your boyfriend now, right?” Dave asks.

“Of course you are,” Blaine says and feels blood rushing downward as Dave starts to stroke him. He’s so ashamed of having said no at all when he knows all his boyfriend wants to do is show him how he feels about him.

“Then please don’t say no to me, either.” Dave ruts a little against him and then starts to push down Blaine’s pants to his thighs with his free hand. “Come on, Blaine. You’re with me now. If you’d give it to Kurt, give it to me. Say yes to me, too.”

“Okay,” Blaine breathes out, closes his eyes, and lets himself fall into the pleasure his boyfriend wants to give him.

*

“ - Burt was right there, paying for his gas, and I couldn’t - “ The words catching in his throat, Blaine shakes his head and leans it against the wide, solid curve of Dave’s shoulder.

Dave pets Blaine’s arm, holding him close against his side on the couch. It feels comforting and protective, sheltering him from the emotional storm inside. “Did he say hello to you?”

“No,” Blaine says. He can see Burt Hummel right there if he closes his eyes, so he leaves them open and stares at the wall across from them. “No, I - I stayed behind my gas pump. I couldn’t talk to him, and he would have come over if he saw me.”

“I always thought Kurt’s dad was a little scary,” Dave says with a nod. “But then he slammed me against a wall one time.”

“No, Burt’s really nice. He always welcomed me into the family.” Blaine’s voice drops, as do his eyes. It hurts to think about the way Burt and Carole had been so nice to him because of Kurt. It hurts to think of the family they’d felt like but no longer are, never actually got to be, in fact. It hurts to think about how much he let them down by not being able to be what Kurt needed. Guilt and sadness claw at him, making him feel raw and lost. “He’s just protective of Kurt. Which is why I didn’t want to see him.”

“You think he would have yelled at you?” Dave asks.

Blaine shakes his head again. “No. I think he would have been nice to me.” His face starts to crumple when he thinks of Burt looking at him with sympathy, with pity, but with a distance that wasn’t there when he was with Kurt. “When we broke up the first time, he was nice to me.” His voice trembles, and he fights to keep it steady. This shouldn’t hurt so much, but it does, right down to his very core. He lost so much. He failed so many people. “He was always nice to me.”

“Was he?”

Nodding, Blaine rubs his hand over his eyes and says, “I’m sorry. You don’t need to hear about all of this.” He knows it’s a rule not to talk about your ex with your current boyfriend, but even if he’d come home too shaken to hide that he was upset he can be better about it now.

“No, it’s okay,” Dave says and continues to stroke Blaine’s arm, so soothing, so kind. “You can talk to me about anything, Blaine.”

“It doesn’t seem right,” Blaine says in apology. He hates that he’s getting his relationship wrong again. He hates that he keeps being reminded of how much he failed with Kurt.

“Tell me whatever you want about Kurt’s family,” Dave insists, and his eyes are bright, like he truly means it. “Really. I promise I’m interested.”

Blaine leans into him in relief and closes his eyes for a second. He’s so lucky to have found someone who cares about him enough to want to listen to him.

"Thank you," Blaine says, and Dave kisses his hair and holds him.

*

Blaine strains upwards, trapped between the hard floor and Dave’s heavy body, and frantically grinds up against Dave’s dick before he comes in shuddering waves in his gym shorts. Dave fucks down against him a few more times and then comes with a groan, collapsing forward onto him for a moment before flopping onto his back beside him.

Blaine grins up at the ceiling, shirtless, sweaty, and drunk on his orgasm, and then he starts laughing. Dave snorts, then joins him, rubbing the sweat out of his own eyes and dropping his arm back to the floor.

“I don’t think exercising together was such a good idea,” Dave says.

“You didn’t like the hot yoga?” Blaine asks him. He feels wobbly and weak from the exertion of the morning - both the exercise and the sex - and all of the endorphins it’s given him, and it’s bliss.

“I liked it so much we didn’t even make it out of the front hall when we got back to the apartment.” Dave rolls onto his side and tugs at the waistband of Blaine’s shorts, sliding it a little down Blaine’s hip. “I spent the whole class looking at your ass in these tiny things. I could barely think about anything else.”

Blaine feels himself blush, but he can’t help but love being appreciated. “The teacher would be so disappointed if she knew.”

“She’d be scandalized.” Dave’s hand comes to rest on Blaine’s thigh, stroking the bare skin below his shorts. “I just wanted to pull them down and lick you open, right there on the mat.”

Blaine’s blush deepens, his breath catching in his throat. Dave is so straightforward and open, and he feels something warm and sensual curl deep in his gut in response.

“Do you like that?” Dave asks him, watching his face. “Will you let me eat you out sometime?”

“Yes,” Blaine says breathlessly. Even just hearing the request thrills him. “Of course.”

Dave’s smile spreads like the sun, and he leans in for a kiss, his skin sweaty and hot and covered with hair that tickles Blaine’s arm. “I can’t wait.” He kisses Blaine’s shoulder and curls around him right there on the floor. “God, I came so hard I’m not sure I can make my legs work again.”

Blaine laughs. “I know the feeling.”

They lie there for a little while, Dave stroking his hand over Blaine’s chest, petting him, soothing him, making him drowsy and content.

Finally Dave says with a groan, “I can’t believe I’m this tired and am still lying here thinking about rimming you. It’s all I can think about.”

“I’m all sweaty,” Blaine says. “And I don’t think I’ll be able to get hard for a while.”

“I don’t care. About either.” Dave kisses his shoulder again. “I just want to.”

Blaine’s toes curl at the thought of being so exposed as Dave licks him open, so intimate and primal. “I want to, too,” he says. “But not right this minute.”

“I know,” Dave says. “I’m glad you like it.”

“I love it,” Blaine admits. He can’t be self-conscious about it. He really does _love_ the closeness and raw sexuality of being rimmed.

“Good.” Dave’s mouth travels up toward Blaine’s throat, his hand wide on Blaine’s belly. “Did you do it a lot before?”

Blaine shivers under Dave’s touch, not able to be properly aroused but still hyper-sensitive in a good way. “Sometimes. I wouldn’t say a lot, but... sometimes we did.”

“Did Kurt like eating you out?”

“I don’t know,” Blaine says. He closes his eyes and tries not to feel guilty for sharing his history with Kurt with someone else, not when it’s over, not when it’s his boyfriend who is asking. He tries not to feel guilty for remembering how good it felt when Kurt buried his face in his ass and took care of him until Blaine was so weak with pleasure all he could do was beg. “Sometimes he really wanted to, and sometimes I think he just did it to make me happy. I think it turned him on more to have that kind of control over my body than actually to do it.”

Dave makes a low, thoughtful, pleased noise. “I can see that,” he says, sucking kisses up Blaine’s throat. “Yeah, I can definitely see him doing that.” He sits up with a groan and then pushes himself up to his feet. He holds out a hand to Blaine. “Come on. Let’s share a shower and see if we’ve got enough left in us to get it up again. It’s my turn to try to make you happy, now.”

“You do,” Blaine tells him, and he tries to put the memories of Kurt’s talented mouth and blazing eyes out of his mind and focus on the man in front of him.

*

His eyes on the football game on the television, Blaine leans forward to take another handful of popcorn from the bowl on the coffee table in front of them, and when he sinks back it only feels right to tip his head onto Dave’s strong shoulder.

He smiles to himself as he eats the popcorn piece by piece, the commentary from both the announcers and his boyfriend washing over him. It’s easy, companionable, just two guys watching a game without anything else to do. They’re just sharing the afternoon, sharing the moment. It’s wonderful, what he always imagined a boyfriend could be before he had one.

“This is really nice,” Blaine says when the game cuts to a commercial. He sits upright and stretches his arms up over his head to get the crick out of his back, but he doesn’t go far. He knows he’s going to want to settle against Dave again in a minute.

Dave smiles at him and takes a long gulp of his beer straight from the bottle. “It’d be better if that quarterback could throw, but...”

With a little laugh, Blaine shakes his head. “That, too, but just - “ He gestures at them. “This. Watching football together.” He takes a sip of his own beer, cool and refreshing after the salty popcorn. His smile turns a little bittersweet, and he hesitates for a second before he offers more of an explanation. He’s never quite sure if he should, no matter that Dave has always been great about him bringing up Kurt. “Kurt never could just sit and do this.”

Dave’s eyes go sharp and interested, and Blaine feels himself flush under the attention; he can’t lie to himself that he doesn’t crave it. “What would he do?”

“Read magazines, play on his phone, make snarky commentary...” Blaine shrugs and picks at the label on his beer bottle. He doesn’t want to sound like he’s bitter, even if a part of him is. He doesn’t know why his interests were so difficult for Kurt to enjoy. “He tried, but he just didn’t see the point, really.”

“Did he try to make you stop?” Dave asks.

“Sometimes,” Blaine has to reply. “Mostly he’d just ignore it, but sometimes he tried to distract me.” His flush deepens as he thinks about Kurt walking across the apartment, fresh from a shower and only in his underwear, unapologetically sexy. “I didn’t always mind, but...”

“I’m sure you didn’t.” Dave puts his arm around Blaine’s shoulders, drawing him close against his side. “But it’s still not what you wanted. Or not _all_ you wanted, because I know how you wanted him.”

Blaine ducks his head. “Yeah,” he admits, and he hates how much of their relationship he still can look back on and remember with fondness. There’s so much of it he still aspires to having again. He wishes he didn’t. He wishes he couldn’t still feel that pull beneath the surface when he thinks about Kurt. He wishes being with Dave didn’t make him think about him so often, but Kurt’s memory always seems to be lurking around their conversations. “Sorry, I don’t mean to talk about him so much. I don’t want you to feel like I’m not happy here with you, because I am.”

“It’s okay,” Dave tells him, and he sounds like he means it, making the guilt in Blaine’s heart settle and calm and yet redouble at the same time. “I don’t mind you talking about him.”

“Are you sure?” Blaine asks.

Dave nods his agreement. “Of course not. He’s a big part of your life. I get that.”

“You’re a big part of my life,” Blaine assures him.

“I know,” Dave says and leans in to kiss him. His eyes are soft and warm. “Now stop feeling guilty. It’s really okay.” He settles back as the game resumes on the television, and he keeps Blaine close against his side. “You deserve to have the life you want, Blaine. We all do.”

*

“You never ask to fuck me,” Dave says breathlessly, his big hands busily unzipping Blaine’s pants and sliding them down his hips.

“I didn’t think you’d want - “ Sprawled out on the bed where they’d been grinding together, Blaine lifts his hips to let Dave strip him naked, his full erection springing free with relief but his eyes on his boyfriend’s face. He feels a sudden rush of shame, because he of all people should know better than to judge people based on what they look like. Preferences have nothing to do with size or appearance. “I’m sorry. That was stupid of me. I shouldn’t have assumed.”

Dave yanks off his own shirt and gets up on the bed beside Blaine. “Do you like to?” he asks, settling between Blaine’s legs, wide and heavy and hot.

“Yes,” Blaine replies with a gasp as Dave kisses down his chest. His body arches up into the touch. The rough rasp of Dave’s jeans against Blaine’s bare skin makes him feel open and vulnerable under him. “Not all the time, but I do - “

“Mm, I bet you’re good at it.” Dave mouths at Blaine’s hip and firmly wraps his hand around Blaine’s erection, his determination to have sex clearly not diminished at all by Blaine’s error. “I bet Kurt liked it a lot.”

“Uh - he - “ Blaine breaks off as Dave licks around the head of his cock. His own kiss-bruised mouth hangs open wide as he moans. He knows he should be taking more care with this conversation and the mis-steps he has made, but Dave’s _mouth_...

Dave jacks him slowly, licking along his shaft between his fingers. “I bet it was hot. Tell me.”

Blaine’s head rolls on the bedspread, his hips jerking up into Dave’s grip. His skin feels too small for his body and burning hot. “I can’t think when you’re doing that,” he says in a strangled voice. It’s too much, tight fingers and wet tongue and warm lips all at once.

“Don’t think.” Dave sucks him into his mouth and works him with wet slurps before he pulls off. “Just tell me.”

“I - I - “ Blaine breathes harshly as Dave sucks him off with eager grunts. It’s sloppy and fast and so incredibly _good_ , and Blaine closes his eyes and tries to give him what he wants in return. He can see Kurt behind his eyes, bare and bent double under him, mostly clothed and draped over the kitchen table, slippery and wet against the shower wall with his legs around Blaine’s waist. “It was hot. He was hot. So hot. He’s really flexible.” He can see Kurt’s lust-clouded eyes, feel the desperate flex of his hips when he got close, hear the way he would beg so shamelessly for Blaine to give him what he needed. He’d beg and shake and sometimes take over and sometimes go limp and just let Blaine _have_ him, and - “And when he wanted it, he - “ Blaine strains up into Dave’s mouth. “And he - fuck, Dave, I - “

Dave let him drop out of his mouth again, jerking him hard and quick. He watches Blaine’s face as his hand works on him. “I bet he got off on your dick. I bet he loved it.” He swirls his thumb over the slick, swollen head of Blaine’s erection, making Blaine shudder and grasp at the sheets. “You have such a fucking nice dick. I bet he fucked himself on it as hard as he could.”

“He - yeah, he - “ Blaine thinks of the way Kurt would ride him, too turned on to do anything but move in whatever way would bring him the most pleasure, his hair drenched with sweat and his cheeks red and his body moving on Blaine like a dream. “Fuck, Dave, I can’t - “ Blaine cries out and comes in glorious, shame-filled spurts over his belly.

“Yeah,” Dave says, pulling Blaine’s ass to the edge of the bed and reaching for the lube. He slicks up his fingers and pushes them inside Blaine’s still-shaking body; it’s too much too fast and so, so good, and Blaine gasps at the pressure. “Yeah, next time you have to fuck me. You have to show me what he likes.” He nudges Blaine’s orgasm-weak legs up to his chest and slicks up his own dick, his hands shaking with his eagerness to get inside him. “Next time.”

Too caught up in aftershocks to argue with any of it, Blaine groans out his agreement as Dave sinks deep and starts to fuck into him.

*

“You didn’t tell me about him,” Dave says disapprovingly as he curls around Blaine later in the dark, his chest to Blaine’s back. He tucks the covers around them both. “About fucking him.”

“I’m sorry,” Blaine says, feeling his heart fall. He knows he wasn’t fair to Dave with his assumptions. Maybe he was too wrapped up in his own need to feel _different_ than he had felt with Kurt that he had focused on how cared for he felt by Dave taking over so many things instead of actually engaging with Dave openly. He knows better. He _should_ know better than to judge people based on looks. “I wasn’t trying to hide anything. I just assumed... I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want you to feel like you have to hide your history with me, Blaine,” Dave tells him with a sigh.

Blaine’s mouth droops, and he stares into the darkness. He’s failing in his relationship, and he hates it. He can’t fail again. He can try harder. “I wasn’t,” he promises. “I didn’t mean to hide anything.”

“But you’d never told me you fucked him.” Dave smooths his hand over Blaine’s bare hip and down his thigh, possessive and comforting.

“I didn’t think you’d want to know those kind of specifics,” Blaine says, sinking back into his hold with relief. Maybe he hasn’t totally messed things up yet.

“I want to know everything about you, Blaine,” Dave promises. “You can tell me anything. I want you to.”

“Okay,” Blaine says softly.

Smiling, Dave presses a kiss to Blaine’s head and says, “Good. I don’t want there to be any secrets between us.”

“Thank you,” Blaine tells him, feeling grateful and fortunate all over again to have found him.

*

Blaine drops into the booth at Breadstix with a sigh. “Sorry I’m late,” he says.

“Everything okay?” Dave asks, holding out his hand across the table. He’s already ordered drinks for them, and Blaine’s touched by that thoughtfulness.

Blaine nods and squeezes Dave’s fingers, grateful for the centering contact. His head hurts, and his heart feels tight with the pressure to get things right at his new job, but at least he has someone on his side. It makes all the difference. He gives Dave the best smile he can. “More or less. The Warbler meeting ran over, and then the printer was jammed, so it took forever for me to make the copies I need of the mashup for tomorrow.”

“That’s rough,” Dave says. “How are you holding up being there? I keep thinking it must be weird for you to be back at Dalton.”

“It’s fine,” Blaine says without hesitation, because that’s the answer that comes most easily, and then he pauses and makes himself think about it. How does it feel? A little like failure, if he’s honest, but it also feels safe, secure. Dalton feels like home, somewhere where he can be his best self. It’s a relief after so many years of not being able to make his life work the way he wanted. “It’s good,” he says with a little surprise.

“It must bring back a lot of memories,” Dave says, watching him.

“It does,” Blaine replies. The Warblers, true friendship, Kurt... “But most of them are good.”

“But not all?” Dave laughs, and it almost sounds forced. “Oh, right, you met Kurt there.”

“Yes,” Blaine says, though that’s not a bad memory, really. It’s bittersweet at worst. For all of the devastation and depression he’s suffered, knowing Kurt has changed his life and has made him a better person. He can’t regret knowing him. He can’t even regret loving him, no matter how off-track his life has ultimately gone because of it.

He was supposed to be in college, and married, and in New York, and instead he’s here in Lima with a different man and an entirely different life spread out in endless question marks ahead of him.

Dave stirs his soda with his straw. “You proposed to him there, too, didn’t you?”

That memory’s a little harder for Blaine to swallow down without bitterness, but it’s true. It happened. He’d pulled together a magical, musical, perfect proposal, and Kurt had said yes with wonder and love in his eyes. It was only later that that love had turned sour. Blaine stares at his own drink and doesn’t rub at the ache in his chest. “Yes.”

“That’s a lot of memories for one place.”

Blaine draws in a breath and lets it out, refusing to think about how the memory of Kurt - bright and beautiful and funny and loving - lurks around every corner there. He’s going to make new memories. Better memories. Somehow. He can’t quite imagine what they’ll be, but then it was always his romantic dreaming that got him in trouble. He is going to focus on reality from now on. “It’s fine,” he says again.

“You know, I remember the first time I saw him,” Dave says, like he’s not aware of the dark turn of Blaine’s feelings or like he’s kindly trying to let him pull himself together. Blaine thinks it must be the second, since his face feels like stone right now. “Maybe it wasn’t the first time I saw him, but definitely the first time I noticed him. He was wearing a shirt he probably wouldn’t be caught dead in now. It was too big, too bright.”

Dave lets out a quiet laugh, then grows quiet. “He had the bluest eyes, though. And he was small, a lot smaller than me. Pink lips, pink cheeks. And I knew. I knew. What I was.” He looks back at Blaine. “Because I wanted to kiss him, you know? To touch him. I saw him in the hallway in that ugly turquoise shirt, and I wanted to put my hands on him and have him, and I hated him for it, because I _knew_. He made me know. He didn’t make me gay, but he made me know. I hated it.”

“You hate being gay?” Blaine asks, trying to follow Dave’s train of thought. It’s hard to listen to the story, knowing how much Dave had hurt Kurt in those early years of his self-awareness, but that’s behind him, and if Blaine is allowed to talk about his past and to forgive himself for mistakes then he should welcome Dave to do the same.

“No, I don’t,” Dave says with an easy smile and another squeeze of Blaine’s hand. “Not now. But then I did. I hated what I was, and I hated him, because he messed up my whole life and everything I thought I was going to want.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Blaine reminds him.

“It wasn’t on purpose,” Dave agrees. “But he changed my life.” He pokes at the ice in his soda again. “He changed me. I saw Kurt, and things would never be the same for me.” He looks up. “But I guess you know that feeling.”

“I guess so,” Blaine says, but he feels like he and Dave aren’t quite speaking the same language. He doesn’t quite understand all that Dave means.

So he smiles at his boyfriend, pushes away his own memories of Kurt, and tells himself to listen harder.

Dave deserves that much from him. He deserves more. Kurt was the past, but Dave’s his present. Maybe his future. Blaine needs to listen.

*

Blaine’s heart is thundering so loud in his ears that he doesn’t even hear Dave walk back into the room.

Dave’s hand lands heavily on his shoulder. “Everything okay?”

Blaine nods, then nods again, still staring at his phone. He reads the text there for the tenth time; it still is the same, utterly unexpected in so many ways.

“It’s Kurt,” Blaine says, looking up at Dave. His mouth feels numb with shock, but he somehow manages to get the words out. “He’s back in Lima. He wants to see me. He says he wants to talk.”

“Oh.” Dave’s voice is soft, and for a moment Blaine wonders if he’s hurt him just mentioning the text, but then Dave smiles and tightens his grip on Blaine’s shoulder. “Well,” he says with a gentle reverence that makes Blaine feel supported instead of judged, “let’s go see Kurt.”

 

*

“There’s a thing I want - “ Blaine starts as he walks into the bedroom behind Dave. His stomach feels tight and twisted, his heart clenched into a knot in his chest, and his fingers are itching to touch, to have, to... _something_.

He’d done the right thing tonight, telling Kurt about his relationship with Dave and stopping Kurt’s sweeping declaration of his plan to get him back - without even asking if Blaine wanted him to - and if he hadn’t done it to make Kurt hurt there’s a part of him that’s glad he _can_ hurt Kurt when he hadn’t been able to touch his heart at all by the time they’d fallen apart.

He’s fiercely proud of that, in fact. It burns dark and satisfied in his chest where so much of his pain had been.

“What?” Dave pulls off his shirt and throws it into the hamper. He opens the dresser drawer that contains the t-shirts he usually sleeps in.

“It’s - “ Blaine shakes his head, torn between his instincts and everything Dave has said to him about sharing all of himself. “It’s kind of about Kurt, and I - “

Dave immediately turns to Blaine, his eyes sharp on his face. “Tell me.”

“I don’t want to be weird,” Blaine says, “but you said I could talk to you about him, and after seeing him tonight...”

Walking over to him, Dave puts his hands square on Blaine’s shoulders. “Tell me,” he says again, intent and focused on him.

Blaine heart shifts through a complex combination of emotions, his eyes drifting off to the side before he meets Dave’s again. He feels twisted up and guilty about it, because he has _Dave_ , he’s not _with_ Kurt, and he shouldn’t let old feelings change new ones, but... Dave has been so kind to him. So caring. So willing to listen and to help. He should believe him that he means it.

He lifts his chin with his decision. “There’s a thing he and I used to do,” he says firmly. “That I want to do with you. Tonight. I want to do it.”

Dave watches him for a moment, but his only reply is a breathless, darkly pleased, “Okay.”

Blaine smiles at him, relieved and so _ready_ , and Dave stands there and lets him do whatever he wants.

He lets Blaine strip off his not-particularly-fashionable clothes and push him onto the bed on his stomach. He lets Blaine pile pillows under his hips and soft belly. He lets Blaine mouth over his broad shoulders and down his spine. He lets Blaine pull apart his plump ass cheeks with sweat-damp palms and breathe hot and wet over the hole he’s exposed to view.

He lets Blaine lick him open, fast and deep and focused, no hesitation, no teasing, just tongue and mouth working him loose and spit-slippery.

“Blaine,” Dave gasps out as Blaine sinks his tongue into him again and again, his face pressed against the sensitive skin of Dave’s ass, which glistens with saliva and grows pink from the scratch of his whiskers. Dave’s hips rock back against him, his opening softening more and more.

“Let me,” Blaine says, feeling powerful and in control and desperate all at once. He hasn’t done this in so long. He drags the tip of his tongue over Dave’s rim in a delicate, pointed tease and grins with delight as Dave shivers and gasps. If his voice is so much deeper than Kurt’s in his memory, it doesn’t matter. “Please, let me.”

“Do you have any idea how hard I am?” Dave shifts his hips, rutting a little against the pillows holding him up. “Fuck, Blaine, I’m not going to stop you.”

“Good.” Blaine’s thumbs dig into Dave’s cheeks, holding him open, and he leans in again, mouthing eagerly at him, pulling him apart, taking him apart with single-minded focus and relishing every reaction of Dave’s body.

“I can’t - I can’t believe he let you do this to him,” Dave says into his arms, rocking up against Blaine’s mouth. His voice is a hoarse rasp, shaking nearly as much as his body is.

“It was his idea,” Blaine says with a fierce, angry fire in his heart. He’d given Kurt _so much_ pleasure like this when Kurt had been willing. He’d rimmed him and fucked him with his tongue until Kurt had been wrecked and wound up like a spring before he broke apart entirely, and Kurt had loved it every single time. Blaine had, too. He’d loved being able to take him apart so intimately, that Kurt had _wanted_ him to tear him to pieces with pleasure. That Kurt had trusted him enough to do it.

“Fuck,” Dave moans.

“Now let me do it to you,” Blaine says, rubbing his thumb roughly over Dave’s entrance. It flutters against him, and he lets the tip of his thumb sink inside. He shudders out a satisfied breath at how ready Dave is. “Let me make you come like this. He broke up with me. He dumped _me_. He can’t have - “ _Me, this_. “I want to do it to _you_.”

Dave’s hands clutch at the covers, and he groans in agreement. His spine dips in supplication, in surrender. “Yes. Yes. Do it. Do it just like you did for him.”

Blaine’s own groan is muffled against Dave’s spit-slick skin as he dives back in.

*

“Just the lube tonight,” Dave says, mouthing at the nape of Blaine’s neck as Blaine reaches for the top drawer of the bedside table. “I want to fuck you without a condom.”

Blaine’s throat closes up, and not because the raw scrape of Dave’s stubble feels so good and male against his skin, and his hand falters for a second on the handle.

He immediately pushes that panic down, tells himself to be logical. He and Dave are monogamous. They’re both clean. They’re adults, and whether they should have talked about this step beforehand, when not in the heat of the moment, Blaine thinks that sometimes part of being mature is knowing that you _don’t_ always have to take things slowly.

Sometimes being slow and careful and loving and thoughtful doesn’t work out in the end, after all. He’s learned that lesson the hard way.

Dave curls one hand around Blaine’s ass, kneading the muscle with his thick fingers. “Hurry, Blaine. I need to feel you. God, I could come just thinking about it.”

Blaine closes his eyes for a moment, remembers how good it felt to have Kurt inside him without anything in between, the intimacy of that connection of their bodies and hearts, and pulls open the drawer.

He doesn’t want to hold back. He misses being that close to someone. He misses the tenderness and the sizzling contact of skin against skin. Besides, he doesn’t want to have some act that was just about Kurt, when his heart and body aren’t Kurt’s anymore. Dave deserves more from him than that. Dave deserves _all_ of him.

And it’s good, it’s incredibly good, being bent almost double and having Dave moving in him, so slippery and close and deep, nothing but lube and sweat to ease the way. The way Dave pants and clutches him close, so lost in his pleasure that he can barely do more than thrust and groan, is more than hot enough to get Blaine close to coming.

“Yeah,” Dave grits out as he moves in his favorite fast rhythm. “Fuck. Yeah.”

Blaine grabs at Dave’s ass and pulls him closer, feeling like he’s in one of his favorite pornos with his knees up by his chest and a bulky guy pressing him down and pounding into him, and it’s hot and amazing and so different than the intense love of what he used to have. He closes his eyes and rides out the guilty-not-guilty pleasure of his fantasy of being taken so eagerly that there isn’t even room to get his hand between them to jerk himself off.

But it’s too soon when Dave’s thrusts become strong enough to push Blaine’s head against the headboard, and it’s too soon when he starts to come deep inside of him, the hot rush of his semen making everything slippery and wet deep inside. Blaine’s not there yet, not without being touched, and he’s suddenly too aware of everything. Too aware of the ache in his back, the dick in his ass, the crick in his neck, the way everything between his legs feels sticky and raw.

“Oh, yeah,” Dave groans, fucking into him in sharp, possessive jerks. “I _love_ your ass. Fuck. Fuck.”

Blaine opens his eyes to drink in Dave’s pleasure to add to his own, but when he looks up into his flushed, broad, sex-distorted face, he’s shocked to find that instead of feeling happy his heart stutters and freezes. His body feels good, but he doesn’t feel right at all.

He swallows back the unwelcome urge to cry. He fights against the desire to curl into a ball. He closes his eyes again to keep from hiding his face in shame, because with Kurt it had felt so close and intimate and important to have sex bare, and with Dave somehow it just feels... messy.

Physically, emotionally, it all just feels messy and base compared to the beauty of everything he’d had with Kurt.

Dave grunts and jerks through his orgasm, grinding deep inside of Blaine’s ass until Blaine feels filled with his come and claustrophobic from Dave’s heavy body on top of him and hot breath against his face.

It’s devastating that it doesn’t feel special, not like it had with Kurt, not like Blaine has been missing so desperately. It doesn’t feel like a new level of connection between them that shows their trust and affection.

It just feels sweaty, close, and dirty, bodies and fluids and fucking and need instead of love.

But Dave looks radiant as he groans and shudders, beaming down at Blaine and kissing him so deeply and tenderly, and Blaine manages to smile back. He manages not to pull away and wipe clean the remnants of what they just did, no matter that the memory will always be there, the memory of something that doesn’t feel pure and tender and sweet at all.

He’d wanted to find that pure bliss again, and instead - all the way deep into his aching heart - he just feels dirty. Maybe he is. Maybe that’s all he can be now. Maybe that’s all the future can hold for him.

“That’s it,” Dave tells him, grabbing Blaine’s dick between them and stroking him hard and tight. He knows how to play Blaine’s body, and he doesn’t hold back. “Blaine, that was incredible.” He grinds in again, softening but still hard enough, and he gasps out his pleasure. “Fuck. There’s nothing between us anymore. We’re all joined together now.”

He sounds so overwhelmed and grateful that Blaine makes himself swallow back his tears and his disappointment and his memories and chases his own orgasm instead.

*

“He’s watching you,” Dave murmurs in Blaine’s ear at the music shop as they walk away from Kurt. “When you aren’t looking, Kurt’s watching you.”

“He’s not my boyfriend anymore,” Blaine says, focusing on the music in his hands even as his heart pounds with the information. He doesn’t want to like that he still draws Kurt’s attention, but he does. He wants Kurt to miss him. He wants Kurt to see that he’s moved on. “I can’t stop him.”

Dave slides his arm around Blaine’s shoulders, and if it feels a little like he’s staking his claim, Blaine can’t blame him; he _is_ Blaine’s boyfriend. “Who says he should stop?”

“I don’t want you to think I want him to,” Blaine says, because it’s hard not to fall into old habits and be friendly with Kurt - and he thinks as an adult he should be - but he doesn’t want Dave to feel at all insecure. Blaine isn’t flirting. He’s being friendly. He isn’t trying to make Kurt watch him.

“It’s okay, Blaine. He can look.” Dave presses a kiss to Blaine’s cheek and glances over at Kurt. His smile turns smug as he watches Kurt across the store. “Let him look. Let him remember what he gave up.”

Blaine’s cheeks flush dark, feeling troubled, because if he doesn’t want to lead Kurt on he doesn’t deliberately want to make him jealous, either, or not too much... His jaw clenches. No, this isn’t his fault at all. If Kurt’s jealous, it’s his own fault for breaking up with him. It’s not _Blaine’s_ fault.

He nods and steps in closer within Dave’s sheltering arm, where he belongs now. Not with Kurt but with someone who doesn’t run hot and cold with wanting him. “Yeah, let him.”

*

“I need - I need - “ Blaine pants, his head thrown back. His voice is barely intelligible to his own ears. He’s soaked with sweat, the sheets sticking to his back and his hair curling out of its gel, and he doesn’t even _care_.

“What?” Dave asks him, his body propped between Blaine’s splayed legs and two lubed fingers pressing and rubbing deep inside his ass, just in the right spot that makes Blaine’s arousal coil and spark with every insistent little nudge of Dave’s fingertips.

“I need to come.” Blaine’s cock leaks pearly fluid onto his belly, his whole body straining as he holds still as Dave moves in him. His muscles are trembling, and he’s so on edge he feels weak with it. He can feel a tear slipping from the corner of his eye and down the side of his face, mixing with the sweat there. “Please. Just a little harder. I need to come.”

Dave pushes into him in the same steady pace - short thrust after short thrust targeted on Blaine’s prostate - not changing at all. “Not yet.”

“Dave - “ Blaine’s hand flies down between his legs to grip Dave’s wrist, trying to get him to move faster, harder, _anything_. He’s so close. It’s an exquisite torture to be kept on this edge, just out of reach of his release. “Please.”

Dave stills his hand entirely, his thick fingers buried in him and holding him open but not _moving_. He doesn’t move even as Blaine tugs at him to keep going. “Would he have let you come yet?” he asks quietly, dangerously. The tone of his voice makes the hair on Blaine’s arms stand on end. “When he did this to you, would Kurt have let you come?”

Blaine’s breath shudders out on a choked sob. He doesn’t want to think about Kurt, but he knows the answer. He knows exactly how well Kurt knew him, and he tries to feel good that Dave is getting to know him that well, too.

He lets his hand falls away, and his eyes flutter shut. His knees drop to the sides in surrender. “No,” he whispers, feeling open and exposed in more ways than just the physical.

Dave says with a proud smile in his voice, “Then it’s not time yet.”

Blaine makes another choked noise despite himself, agonized with need and a dose of guilt he can’t even begin to contain, but he gasps his approval as Dave starts to move again, rubbing and pressing against his prostate with slow, deep movements, pushing him closer and closer to his orgasm in tiny, torturous increments.

It’s not enough and far too much all at once, and it’s exactly what Blaine needs. It pushes out all of his thoughts, all of his needs, just leaves him weak with arousal and single-minded in his focus on the bursts of pleasure coming from deep within him thanks to this new man who is learning his body so well.

“Look at you,” Dave says. “You love this. You love how we know how to make you wait.”

“I do,” Blaine promises. “I do.”

Blaine’s cheeks are wet with tears and his stomach slick with pre-come when he finally is so over-stimulated he can’t hold back his orgasm anymore. His hands fisted in the sheets and his dick jerking on its own in time with Dave’s thrusts, he comes in long, thick spurts over his belly, his body twitching and shuddering out of his control.

Dave keeps his fingers deep in him, milking even more of his release out of him, pushing him to the very limits of his body, until Blaine lies limp, flushed, teary, and spent on the sweaty sheets, utterly done.

As Dave kneels up beside him to strip his own rock-hard dick over Blaine’s wrecked body, Blaine smiles up at him with wet eyes and touches Dave’s hairy thigh with a hand he can’t stop from shaking.

Dave was right. That _was_ what he needed.

Dave fucks his own fist, grunting into it, and comes messily, hot spatters across Blaine’s chest and throat, and Blaine can only whisper an overwhelmed, “Thank you.”

*

“I hate that you have to leave,” Dave says, sprawled on the bed with his pants undone and his spent dick still slick with Blaine’s saliva.

“I know,” Blaine says. He ducks down to find his shirt under the chair in the corner. “But I wasn’t even planning on coming over tonight. I still have to organize the music for Warblers practice tomorrow.” He tugs his shirt on and goes over to give Dave a quick kiss. “But I’m glad you texted. It was nice to have dinner with you.”

Dave hooks his fingers through the loops on Blaine’s belt and keeps him beside the bed. “I wasn’t done with dessert,” he pouts, and Blaine feels his erection twitch in his tight pants. He hopes he cools down before he gets home, but if not he can jerk off to the memory of Dave pulling his hair and swearing as he came in his mouth. It’s a very, very good memory. He loves how much Dave loves his blowjobs.

“I’m sorry,” Blaine tells him. “It’s not that I don’t want to stay, but I have work to do. If I stay for ‘dessert’ you know I’ll fall asleep, and then I’ll never leave.”

“So don’t leave,” Dave says.

Blaine shakes his head with a rueful smile. “Dave - “

“No, I know you have work tonight,” Dave says, struggling up onto his elbows. “But if we lived together, you wouldn’t have to leave. You’d never have to leave.”

“I - “ Blaine can feel his mouth hanging open in surprise. It’s the last thing he expected to hear. “Living together? I’m not sure I’m - “

“If you aren’t ready, that’s okay,” Dave tells him. “I know living with Kurt was a big deal for you. But I want to. I’m not afraid of it.”

It _had_ been a big deal to move in with Kurt. Blaine had been sure it would solve everything, bring them into perfect alignment, give them their happily ever after.

It had done the exact opposite.

It had torn Blaine’s life into a thousand jagged pieces, and he is still having to work so hard to fit it all back together again. He is still struggling to keep his head up and keep moving beyond him like the mature adult he knows he is.

“Should I not have asked? Dave says, looking away. “I’m sorry. I’m moving too fast. I know you don’t feel about me the way you did about Kurt.”

“No,” Blaine says and kneels on the bed beside him, cupping his face. He doesn’t want Dave to compare himself to Kurt. He doesn’t want him to feel like he doesn’t measure up, not when he’s the best thing in Blaine’s life, not when he’s given him so much. “No, you can ask me whatever you want. You know I care about you, Dave. I hope you do.”

Dave looks up at him again, more than a little sad. “Then what? I hate to think that he’s made you feel like you aren’t good enough to live with anyone.” Blaine shakes his head as Dave continues. “I’d hate to think you’d stop me from getting to know what it’s like living with you just because he made a different choice.”

“I - It just went so badly...“

“That doesn’t matter to me. I want to know what it’s like to live with you,” Dave tells him softly. “I know I’m not him, but I still want to know what it’s like to sleep with you and wake up with you and spend every minute with you.”

Blaine wants to tell Dave that he doesn’t need him to be Kurt, but Dave’s looking at him with such tenderness that the words stick in his throat. Kurt’s complicated, but Dave is not. He doesn’t speak in riddles. He doesn’t keep his thoughts and feelings hidden. He’s easy and entirely himself, and there’s Blaine’s answer.

Blaine leans down and kisses him, long and soft. “Okay,” he says, and the smile that lights up Dave’s face is worth every butterfly in Blaine’s stomach over his choice.

If living with someone who hadn’t truly wanted him had ripped his life apart, maybe living with someone who seems to crave him is what he needs to put it back together.

“You won’t be sorry,” Dave promises him.

“I know,” Blaine says, laughing in surprise as Dave tumbles him to the bed and his plans for getting his work done fly out the window.

“The only one who will be sorry is Kurt,” Dave says before he kisses him and kisses him and kisses him, pulling at his clothes and kissing him some more until Blaine can’t be sorry for anything at all.

*

“Where do you want to put the glasses?” Dave asks Blaine, a cardboard box open on the kitchen counter - in _their_ new kitchen - in front of him.

“Wherever you want,” Blaine says. He breaks down the box he just emptied of towels and sets it on the pile of cardboard to be recycled. “It doesn’t matter to me.”

Dave frowns at the open cabinets for a moment and then asks, “Where did you have them in your last apartment, then? We can just do that.” The words are casual, too casual, so casual that they make Blaine look over at him. The question feels odd to him, not quite what he expected.

“My last apartment was nothing like this,” Blaine says in confusion. “The loft didn’t really have cabinets, and I didn’t organize it, anyway.”

Dave stares at him in something that looks like hunger for a moment before he turns away in disappointment. He starts to put the glasses in the cabinet closest to him.

A part of Blaine feels like he should apologize to him, but he doesn’t know how exactly he’s failed Dave by telling the truth.

*

“Yeah,” Dave moans as Blaine pushes into him and tries not to think about anything else but what he has, what is actually his.

Blaine is used to the spread of Dave’s ass under his palms as he holds him open and pushes into him, shuddering with the clasp of Dave’s body letting him in. He’s used to Dave’s deep, guttural groan as Blaine slides deep. He’s used to the height difference, the way Blaine needs to be up high on his knees to get just the right angle for them to move smoothly.

He’s used to the way Dave swears low and fierce as Blaine fucks him. He’s used to propping himself up with his hands on Dave’s broad back instead of curling his fingers around sharp hips. He’s used to the way Dave shivers as he takes it and always needs a hand on his dick to get him to come at the end instead of working himself to his orgasm like a dancer on Blaine’s dick.

He’s used to fucking Dave now, the different way their bodies can come together when he has the chance to top. He knows how it works with Dave, and it does work. He loves the control he can have over such a big man, the way he can turn Dave’s body to jelly with the power of his own. He loves the weight of Dave’s body against his own, moving with him, finding the right new positions for their pleasure.

He’s used to all of the differences with fucking Dave, and he can’t complain about them. The sex is hot. Dave is hot.

“Oh,” Blaine gasps as his skin tingles with the first warnings of his orgasm.

Dave’s ass is tight and his body is eager, and it’s _hot_.

Blaine just wishes, as he leans up higher on his knees and snaps his hips forward again and again, his hands on the muscular back in front of him and his belly rubbing against Dave’s plump ass, that he could keep himself from _noticing_ the differences between Dave and Kurt every single time.

He sets his jaw and fucks Dave harder as an apology, as a promise to do better, to _be_ better, even though he doesn’t know how.

*

Blaine props his arm against the tiled wall of the shower and presses his face against his forearm, his hand working his cock. He curls his toes against the slightly rough surface of the tub’s bottom and sways into the rhythm of his hand, fast and tight. His blood pumps through his veins, his breath scrapes out of him, and the streaming water sweeps his sweat away as soon as it rises on his skin.

His hand on the wall curls into a fist as his body tightens, spiraling closer to his release. Behind his closed eyelids, he imagines - remembers - hands on him, lips, breathy moans against his skin, frantic and free. His arousal builds, everything focusing down into the pleasure in his belly.

He bites back a moan, lifting up onto his toes and fucking into his hand. He can feel the ghost of a man behind him, touching him, fingering him, loving him, and his hand moves faster, pushing him nearly to the edge.

The shower curtain slides open beside him, and in his pajamas with sleep-tousled hair Dave grins with interest at the sight.

Blaine gasps in surprise, but he’s too close to be embarrassed. He’s too close to stop himself. He’s too close to do anything but bite his lip and try not to come.

“You should have woken me up,” Dave says with a chuckle. “I would’ve been happy to take care of that for you.”

“Sorry, you were sleeping,” Blaine tells him, his hand slowing but not letting go. Not that he’d really wanted morning sex when he’d woken up hard. The privacy of their new shower had been appealing, just him and his hand and the visions in his mind he can’t quite banish.

“What are you thinking about?” Dave asks as he strips off his shirt and drops it to the floor.

Blaine moves back and watches Dave step out of his boxers. “You,” he lies and tries not to think any more about slim hips and pale skin and flat, perfect abs when Dave joins him in the shower.

*

“Did you see him?” Dave asks after he shuts the door on Animal Control. He throws both locks with more force than they require, like he’s afraid they might come back.

“The bear?” Blaine says with a laugh. He has the bedspread bundled in his arms, ready to be washed. He’s considering washing the sheets, too, just in case the bear had fleas. Yes, he probably should. “Yes, I saw the bear, Dave.”

“I meant Kurt,” Dave says.

Blaine’s amusement drains out of him. “Of course I saw him. He was right there.” He nods to the bedroom. It had been weird having Kurt in the apartment, in the room. It’s like he’s a ghost now, haunting the space long after he left. Blaine can still see him standing there, beautiful and and poised ready to act, calling Animal Control and arranging for their help while Blaine was still trying to talk Dave down onto the floor.

“Yes,” Dave says, stepping toward him. There’s a banked fire in him, a simmering danger that Blaine doesn’t understand. “Yes, he was. He was here in our apartment.”

Blaine’s pulse begins to skitter with a new rush of adrenaline as he watches him come closer.

“He still wants you,” Dave says, and it’s not quite an accusation.

His heart rising into his throat, Blaine shrugs and clutches the comforter closer to his chest like a shield or a safety blanket. He knows how Kurt looks at him. He knows what Kurt has told him about wanting him back. He can’t be totally blind to it.

He can’t help but think about it, as much as he knows he shouldn’t.

“He wants you. He wants to be here with you.” Dave gestures around the apartment, calm but intent. “He’d come back if you asked. He would have stayed if you asked.”

“Why would I ask?” Blaine says with a frown. He might be unable to control his thoughts, but he knows he isn’t going to ask Kurt for anything but friendship. “It’s over between us.”

“He’s desperate for you,” Dave replies, taking another step closer. “I know what he looks like when he’s miserable, and he _is_.”

Blaine shakes his head, not quite a denial. His stomach churns, because he knows Dave’s right, and he hates that he is and loves it at the same time, just like he hates that Dave knows what Kurt looks like miserable but loves that Dave knows him well enough to be able to read those signs and fill in the gaps of the things Blaine sees, too, but can’t put words to.

“He would come back if you called him. Even with me here,” Dave says with a quiet, self-satisfied delight. “He’d do it to have you.”

Blaine can imagine the nervous hope in Kurt’s voice when he answered the phone, can imagine the way it would shake if Blaine invited him over, can imagine how Kurt wouldn’t be able to turn him down. He can imagine Kurt’s eyes, wide and confused, if Dave opened the door. He can imagine how Kurt would step inside their apartment all the same, if Blaine asked.

It’s horrible and thrilling all at the same time to know that it would happen just like that.

“He’d do it to _have_ you,” Dave repeats, and the deeper, dirtier meaning of his words sinks in.

“He doesn’t want that,” Blaine says with his heart in his throat and beating frantically. He can’t think about sex with Kurt. He absolutely can’t think about sex with Kurt in front of Dave, not like this, not when it’s a taunt instead of a secret to share. “He wouldn’t.”

“He loves you,” Dave tells him. He doesn’t look away. He barely even blinks. “He _would_.”

“He doesn’t share,” Blaine tells him. His mind is spinning with confusion at the idea and the fact that Dave is saying any of it, but he knows that much is true.

Dave takes the bundle from Blaine’s arms and sets it aside on a nearby chair. “He’d share _you_.” He looks Blaine up and down, judging, more like he’s a piece of property than a person. “You know he would. To have you, he would.”

“I don’t want him to,” Blaine breathes, anguish bright in his chest. He doesn’t know if he means he doesn’t want Kurt or if he doesn’t want Kurt to share him, and he’s desperately upset to think that it’s probably the latter, still, even after all of this time. He hates that he’s still caught in Kurt’s web despite it all, despite heartbreak and despair and a new boyfriend who is far too understanding of how hard things are for him.

A little voice inside Blaine fears that Dave understands entirely too much about how hard things are for him.

Dave tips Blaine’s face up with one big hand on his chin and tells him with a dark, certain determination that sends shivers - of excitement, of fear, of not nearly enough revulsion - down Blaine’s spine, “Maybe you will.”

*

“ - Rachel and Kurt asked me to go _easy_ on them.” Blaine looks up from his dinner with a laugh. “Can you imagine? My kids have worked so hard. Giving up goes against everything show choir is supposed to be.”

Across the table, Dave shrugs, poking at the chicken on his plate.

“What’s wrong?” Blaine asks. “Is dinner not okay? I’m sorry. I didn’t have the time to cook anything fancy when I got home from Invitationals.”

“Dinner’s fine.” Dave puts down his fork. “I guess I’m just surprised that you didn’t give Kurt what he asked for.”

Blaine’s head lifts in surprise. “What? Why?”

“I don’t know,” Dave says. “I thought you were friends again.”

“We are,” Blaine says slowly. They can be in the same space without arguing, and he doesn’t think Kurt and Rachel are actively trying to undermine the Warblers beyond poaching Jane and their ridiculous request for him to throw Invitationals, so things are fine.

“Then I would have thought you’d have tried to help him.” Dave shrugs again. “I don’t know. Maybe you’re not as friendly as you thought.”

“No, we’re friends,” Blaine insists. They can spend time together again without it being all bitterness and memory. It’s not what it once was between them, but that’s to be expected. They’d been best friends and engaged, after all. It’s not like they will ever be that close again, no matter that sometimes he finds himself missing being the recipient of Kurt’s acerbic smile when it’s turned on Rachel instead. But they can’t go backwards. This is what they are now.

Dave’s eyes meet his, intense and searching. “Are you sure there isn’t something else going on? Other feelings that are coloring your actions toward him, making you not want to help?”

“ _No_ , Dave,” Blaine says, reaching across to take his hand. “No. I’m with you, and Kurt and I are completely over. We’re just friends. Nothing more.”

Dave nods, but he doesn’t look convinced, a furrow growing between his brows.

“What can I do to prove it to you?” Blaine asks him. His heart sinks in despair, because maybe Dave will ask him not to be friends with Kurt at all, and he probably wouldn’t be wrong to do so. Blaine feels like they’re always talking about him, pulling out Blaine’s complicated memories and feelings and laying them bare, and it’s cruel to Dave to keep doing it. It’s disloyal.

Blaine’s supposed to be with _Dave_ , not spending so much time thinking about Kurt.

No, he should probably stop being friends with Kurt and put him completely out of his mind for good. It makes Blaine feel like he’s going to be sick to cut Kurt out of his life again, but he knows Dave wouldn’t be wrong to ask.

Blaine swallows down the bile rising in his throat and leans toward his boyfriend, the person he needs to focus on keeping happy. “Please, let me prove it to you,” he all but begs. This is his life. This is what’s important. He needs to get it right.

There’s a tiny flare of some strong emotion deep in Dave’s eyes, but he smiles as he turns his hand over to hold onto Blaine’s. “I believe you,” he says. “But maybe...”

“What?” Blaine asks when Dave trails off.

“Maybe tonight you can tell me something you haven’t before,” Dave says. “Really share with me, you know? Show me you trust me.”

Blaine squeezes his hand. “I trust you with everything.”

Dave smiles at him again, and he looks so happy that Blaine’s heart melts with relief. He’s glad he can make him happy. He wants to. He really does. “Good. I trust you, too.” Dave ducks his head a little. “Then maybe... if it’s not too corny...”

“Anything,” Blaine tells him, grateful for the chance, beyond grateful that he isn’t being asked to cut Kurt out of his life.

“I want to talk about our first times,” Dave says. His cheeks go a little pink with the request, like he’s embarrassed or excited, but he doesn’t look away from Blaine’s face. “Yours with Kurt, mine... I want to share those stories with each other.”

Blaine’s never talked about his first time having sex, not with anyone but Kurt, and the request takes him aback a little. It was such a private moment, meant for only the two of them. It had meant so much to share it with Kurt.

But Blaine reminds himself that as much as the memory feels so perfect and special, it’s just sex. It’s just a story. It wasn’t perfect, or at least he and Kurt weren’t. It’s just a thing he did when he was a kid, years ago now.

And his boyfriend is Dave, who deserves to hear about all of his history... and who seems to love it when Blaine talks dirty to him. He gets so into it, sucking Blaine off or fucking him so hard just the way Blaine loves when Blaine tells him what he wants or tells him about things he’s done before.

“Can we do that?” Dave asks him, hopeful and intent.

“Of course we can,” Blaine tells him, and he tries not to feel guilty as Dave’s smile blinds him across the table. He clears his throat and forces himself to smile back.

What he and Kurt shared isn’t secret. It isn’t sacred. It’s just his past.

He can tell his boyfriend about it if he wants to.

*

“Touch me like you touched him then,” Dave begs, his mouth on Blaine’s and his hand moving clumsily on Blaine’s cock. They’re lying side-by-side on the bed, naked and entwined. “Show me what you did to him.”

Dave feels nothing like Kurt - he’s broad where Kurt is slim, hairy where Kurt is smooth, thick where Kurt is long - and yet Blaine finds himself kissing him with his heart cracking open with tenderness and the same jittery nerves he felt years ago the first time he got to touch Kurt like this.

It’s so far from Blaine’s memory and yet too close for him to do anything but fall into it.

He pulls at Dave’s dick, worships it with his hand, and kisses him again and again and again until he’s all but crying - with happiness like the first time, with bitter despair that it’s not real now, with relief at having just a little glimpse of what he still craves - as they work themselves to a quiet, tender frenzy in the golden glow of the bedside lamp.

*

Kurt’s mouth sinks over Blaine’s erection, a little rougher than Blaine remembers, but he thinks it must be eagerness driving him, because he can see the smile in Kurt’s bright eyes. He can see the love in them.

“Kurt,” Blaine murmurs, trying to get his hand into Kurt’s thick hair but not quite able to reach it. He’s so far away. Too far. Blaine has missed him so much.

Kurt groans, deep and raw, and works him with the flat of his tongue.

“Kurt,” Blaine murmurs again. He feels filled with the sunshine above him, bathed in love from the man touching him. He feels wanted, so badly wanted. Smiling up at the sky, he parts his legs as Kurt settles between them and sinks down deep again.

Kurt slowly pulls off, sucking hard at the head, and Blaine’s hips jerk up with the delightful overstimulation.

“Kurt, I need - “

Kurt groans again around him, the vibration traveling up through Blaine’s body like an earthquake. His body shakes, the ground shakes, and Kurt keeps up exactly what’s he’s doing.

“ _Kurt_...”

Blaine blearily makes himself lift his head to look at him, because he’s always loved the way Kurt’s face gets so focused and pleased when he has his lips wrapped around Blaine’s dick, but when he opens his eyes he’s not outside but in his new bedroom with the light of dawn filtering through the curtains, and it’s Dave between his legs blowing him.

The dream and reality swirl around Blaine’s head, and for a moment they’re both there, working together, two mouths, four hands, all for him, and Blaine wants to _weep_ with happiness, but then Dave takes him into the tight clasp of his throat, and Blaine gasps and pulses and loses the dream altogether.

He doesn’t know which name he cries out as he comes, but Dave’s looking up at him with approval as he licks him clean.

“Oh,” Blaine breathes out and closes his eyes again until he knows he can guard his expression. His feelings are a tempest, as out of control as his body.

He’s still shaking with disappointment and desire and blissful release when he slides down the bed and finds Dave’s cock with his own mouth. He can’t meet Dave’s eyes with the shame of his dream, but at least he can return the favor before he has to go to work.

Blaine’s clumsy with sleep and emotion, but Dave doesn’t seem to care. He just groans and slides his dick between his lips with a hand on the back of Blaine’s head, pushing him down.

“Yeah, Blaine,” Dave tells him. He ruts gently into Blaine’s mouth. “I love it when you want it like that. Fuck, yeah, get me off. I need it so bad. That was so hot.”

Blaine sighs out, grateful that he didn’t slip and say the wrong name in his sleep, and relaxes his throat to take Dave deeper in silent apology.

The wide stretch of his jaw and fingers in his hair are so simpler than the unwelcome thoughts in his head and yearnings in his heart.

*

“What are you doing after work today?” Dave asks. He pours himself a fresh cup of coffee and leans his hip against the counter as he takes a sip.

Blaine looks up from his cereal and says, “I don’t know. I don’t think I have any plans.” He checks his calendar on his phone. “Nope, I’m totally free after the performance.”

“My afternoon class was canceled today,” Dave says. “Want to do something together?”

“Sure,” Blaine says with a smile. He’s been feeling twisted up inside with so many thoughts of Kurt, and some time with his boyfriend is probably just what the doctor ordered to get himself straightened out. He wants things to be easy again, easy with Dave and easy in his own heart.

Dave’s smile is wide and happy. “Great. Lima Bean at four? My treat?”

Blaine’s stomach twists at the thought, and he says, “What about somewhere else?”

“What’s wrong with the Lima Bean?” Dave asks.

With a shrug, Blaine says, “I don’t know. We’ve been there a lot lately.” He gets up to put his bowl into the sink and tries not to think about all of the memories the Lima Bean holds for him. It feels like an emotional minefield filled with Kurt, the exact kind of thing he wants to avoid. “And we keep seeing Kurt there.”

Dave comes over to him and puts his hands on Blaine’s shoulders. “He has to get used to us, Blaine,” he says with an encouraging smile. “We’re together, and he needs to see that.”

“I know, but...” Blaine doesn’t know how to tell Dave how much it gets to him to see Kurt watching them with sad eyes he tries to hide but can’t from someone who knows him so well. He knows it shouldn’t, because his relationship with Kurt’s supposed to be behind him. He shouldn’t feel so responsible for not jumping to fix the regrets Kurt now has about breaking up, but it eats away at him no matter what he does when he sees Kurt’s pain right there in front of them.

It eats away at him that a part of him is still relieved to see it, too.

“When we see him, you need to invite him over to sit with us,” Dave tells him firmly, something dark in his voice. “He _needs_ to get used to us. He needs to get used to being with us.”

“I don’t think he will,” Blaine says. He doesn’t think _he_ can either, not if Kurt’s uncomfortable. He’s too aware of him, too aware of the history the three of them have. He can’t imagine Kurt feels any differently. He can’t imagine Kurt wants to spend any time with them at all.

“Oh,” Dave says and cups Blaine’s face with both hands, looking down at him with a proprietary sort of pleasure. “You underestimate yourself, Blaine. Kurt misses you. He’ll sit with us if you ask. He won’t be able to stop himself.”

Blaine swallows, breathless and flustered and uncomfortable and yet not quite able to deny to himself the fact that he will still take any time with Kurt he can get.

Dave leans in and drops a kiss on his mouth, still holding his face. “Trust me. I know him.”

*

“Blaine!” Dave gets up from the couch as Blaine lets himself into the apartment. His brow is creased with worry. “Where have you been?”

Blaine sets down his bag and hurries toward him. “I’m sorry. I was with Kurt all night and - “

Every muscle in Dave’s body goes tense and sharp, like a wolf about to attack. “You _what_?” he asks.

“No, no, not like that,” Blaine assures him as his heart flutters in panic, though it kind of was; he can still taste Kurt’s lips on his if he thinks about it too much. “Sue locked us in a fake elevator. It was - You know how she is. But I wasn’t with-him with him.”

“Oh.” The tension in Dave uncoils, and he puts his hands on Blaine’s shoulders and searches his face. “Are you okay? You look really wound up.”

“Yeah, I... I’m okay. It was just intense.” Blaine tries to smile at him, and he’s glad when Dave tugs him in against him for a hug and he doesn’t have to force the expression anymore.

“I’m sure it was,” Dave says. He breathes out, his voice going almost dreamy. “Wow, trapped with Kurt in an elevator overnight. I can’t imagine many things _more_ intense.”

*

Blaine twirls the pasta on his fork and half-listens to Dave across the table from him.

“So I tell the coach I don’t care how well T.J. throws if the idiot receiver he put on the field can’t actually catch a ball - “ Dave says, gesturing as he tells the story of his football practice.

Blaine nods along as he chews, remembering the extra garlic in the meal he’d shared with Kurt in the elevator and finding the jarred sauce Dave has heated up so much less flavorful.

“ - but of course Coach thinks T.J. walks on water, so we waste a full half hour of our practice with that meat-head throwing to a moron of a receiver who probably needs fucking glasses or something - “

Making a sympathetic sound, Blaine pokes at his pasta. He can’t believe he’d had a better dinner sitting on the floor of a fake elevator with his ex-fiancé while held captive by an insane Sue puppet. Not that it’s Dave’s fault. Sue had provided them with multiple courses from Breadstix, after all.

“ - when we finally bench that guy, we were able to run some actual plays, which - “

Blaine takes another bite of his dinner and tries to pay attention. He tells himself he’s having trouble because of all of the emotion of the past day and the difficulty he’d had sleeping on the hard floor (so close to Kurt, his mind whispers...). He tells himself he’s glad to be home with his boyfriend but is just tired.

He tells himself he hadn’t had more fun talking to Kurt about nothing at all and yet everything under the sun - memories, musicals, friends, family - as they easily filled the hours together than he is listening to Dave talk about his day.

Blaine’s stomach churns, the pasta sauce acidic in his throat. He feels like he’s going to throw up. He feels like he’s going to break down in tears.

He feels like his body is rejecting everything he’s eating and everything he’s telling himself, and he hates that it is. He breathes in through his nose and makes himself take another bite.

He wants _this_ , this man and this dinner and this life.

This is what he wants.

Not take-out, not industrial carpeting under his head, and definitely not a sharp sense of humor and eyes like the sea that seem to look right into his soul.

No, Blaine thinks he forces himself to swallow, he needs _this_ to be what he wants.

*

Blaine shuts his eyes and lets himself be fucked, lets Dave’s heavy body pin him over the arm of the couch and make it nearly impossible to breathe or to move or to think. All he can do is lie there with his ass in the air and his face against the cushions and his legs trapped between Dave’s and his body slicked open and fucked open and at Dave’s mercy and be _driven_ toward his climax with every deep thrust of Dave’s cock.

He doesn’t want to think. He doesn’t want to think about kissing Kurt in that elevator earlier. He doesn’t want to think about eating with him, talking with him, laughing with him, watching him sleep, and then wanting to _drown_ in the beautiful feel of his mouth and his hands and his body so whip-thin and strong against his and -

“You’re thinking of him,” Dave says against the back of his neck, bending low over him and pushing that much more of the air out of his lungs. “Right now. You’re thinking of him.”

Blaine can’t deny it, and he squeezes his eyes shut and whimpers.

“You’re thinking of him fucking you,” Dave says, his meaty thighs hot and hairy against the backs of Blaine’s legs. “You’re thinking of what he feels like.” His balls slap against Blaine’s spread-open ass, and he gets his hands on Blaine’s wrists and pins them too hard against the cushions. “He’s smaller than me. Can’t hold you down like I do, like I could hold him, too. He’s pushy, but if you fought him he’d have trouble bending you over and just taking you.”

“I - “ Blaine feels for a second like he might throw up the small amount of dinner he ate, and he tries to push back, to get some air, and he _can’t_. He can’t. Dave’s right. He’s too big. He’s heavy and solid, tall, and with the leverage he has in this position and the advantage of slamming himself balls-deep into Blaine he’d be hard to move. “Fuck,” Blaine gasps, and it’s partly out of a sharp surge of arousal and partly out of unhappy awareness of how much this _isn’t_ Kurt.

“You’re thinking of him,” Dave says, grunting with each thrust, sweat dripping down the crack of Blaine’s ass where Dave’s dick is buried in him. “I bet you thought of him all night long when you were trapped together.”

“I - “ Blaine shakes his head, because he hadn’t been, not like this, but now he _is_ , now that he remembers exactly what Kurt’s mouth tastes like and his body feels like and his hips move like and just how much he misses it all. He shouldn’t be thinking about him, but he is.

“You’re thinking of him, Blaine. I know you are. You think of him all the time.” He paws at Blaine’s balls and rubs at his dick. “Admit it.”

“I - Ah - “ Blaine shudders as Dave’s thrusts lift him off his toes and he loses the little bit of control he had with his feet on the floor. It’s so powerful, being fucked like this, consuming every inch of him, including his good sense. “I - Dave - Kurt - “

“It’s okay,” Dave says with a violent shudder. He pulls at Blaine’s dick and starts to rut in sharp, jerky thrusts into Blaine’s ass. “It’s okay. Fuck.” He grinds deep, panting against Blaine’s ear as he holds off his orgasm. “It’s okay that you are.”

“Dave - “

Dave starts to fuck into him faster and harder, sharp and powerful, with too much force and not enough lube, and it’s nothing like the care Kurt took with him but still more than Blaine deserves. “I know you can’t stop thinking of him, Blaine,” he gasps against Blaine’s neck. He fucks the breath right out of Blaine’s lungs, thrust after thrust. “When I’m with you, I can’t stop thinking of him, too.”

*

Sick with guilt and the dark truths wrapped in Dave’s words, Blaine says, “I’m sorry,” the second they peel apart from each other. “I didn’t want to kiss him. I don’t want to miss him.”

He hopes Dave will reply in kind and put them back on a path that at least looks like the right one, but instead Dave says, “No, it’s okay. It’s good.” He scrubs at the arm of the couch with his discarded shirt and picks up his jeans from the floor.

“How is it good?” Blaine asks in a voice thick with despair. Lube and semen smear unpleasantly between his legs as he stands.

“It’s good that you’re still drawn to each other and still want each other, because it means he’ll come to you.”

“He’s not going to come to me,” Blaine tells him. He knows Kurt won’t, not now that he has a boyfriend of his own. It’s not a possibility, not anymore. Of course it’s too late now that their kiss has finally made Blaine wake up to just how much he still _wants_ Kurt, wants him into the very darkest reaches of his own heart.

“He will, Blaine,” Dave insists. “He wants you. He _loves_ you.”

Blaine feels his mouth begin to tremble, and he fights back the urge to cry. He hates that part of him wants Dave’s words to be true.

He hates that he’s so weak that he can’t deny it anymore. He can’t deny how much he still loves him, too.

Dave comes to stand in front of him, one hand heavy on Blaine’s shoulder. His expression is kind but almost rapturous, full of pride and pleasure. “It’ll all happening just how I thought it would. He’ll come to you, and he’ll beg for you,” he says, and he smiles to himself, “and I’ll be here, too.”

“He’s not - “ Blaine shakes his head, barely able to get the words out. “He’s not going to stay if you’re here with me.” He’s seen how Kurt looks at Dave, how uncomfortable he is. Even if Kurt still loves him, he can barely stand to be near Dave. Whatever Dave is hoping for beyond that is completely out of the question.

“Maybe not the first time,” Dave says, quite seriously, like he’s thought this through. Clearly he has. “But he loves you, Blaine. He _will_ stay eventually. For you. He’ll come for you, and we’ll both be here. And he’ll stay.”

Blaine hates that a part of him hopes against hope that Dave is right. He hates that how much Dave has thought about it actually feels good, like salvation wrapped up in torture. He hates that a part of him feels like all of his guilt toward Dave would be absolved if he didn’t have to hurt Dave to have Kurt, too.

“No matter how he feels about me,” Dave tells him, still so painfully kind, “how he feels about you is stronger.”

*

“I want to be over him,” Blaine whispers even later in the dark, curled up in bed with his boyfriend. His ass is sore, but his heart hurts even more. He doesn’t want to be tied up in emotional knots. He just wants to be free and happy. He just wants everything to be simple and easy, just him and Dave and nothing else.

Nothing feels simple at all anymore.

He clings to his boyfriend, his only anchor in the storm his heart has become.

“It’s all right, Blaine,” Dave replies, his arm tight around Blaine’s shoulders, keeping him close. “You’re allowed to have feelings for him.”

“But you and I are dating,” Blaine says. “I’m so sorry.” His own disloyalty cuts him to the core. He’d thought he was better than this. He thought he had control of himself, of his actions and his thoughts. He thought he’d learned from cheating on Kurt not to let himself even think about straying.

But he can’t stop thinking about Kurt. He can’t. Kurt’s smile, his laughter, the warm press of his mouth and strength in his lean body...

Blaine’s eyes sting with tears.

He’s with Dave, but he can’t stop thinking about Kurt. He has tried, so hard, but he can’t. He’s the worst kind of person, disloyal and dishonest and cruel. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, the words like knives in his throat.

“Don’t be sorry,” Dave tells him with so much more kindness than Blaine wants or deserves.

“But I am. _You’re_ my boyfriend. You’re the one I sleep with and live with and have sex with. Not him. Not anymore.”

“I knew about your past and your feelings when we started dating, remember?” Dave says. “I knew you two wouldn’t be able to keep away from each other. I knew it was only a matter of time.”

“I know,” Blaine says, his voice thick with shame, because he hates that he’s been so obvious, “but I’m trying so hard to get over him.”

Dave strokes his fingers over the curve of Blaine’s shoulder. “I know,” he says quietly. “But you can’t.”

“I’m _sorry_ ,” Blaine says yet again. Dave’s words made him feel small and weak, filled with despair. He should be better than this. He should be moving on better than this. But he isn’t. Maybe he can’t. Maybe he never will. Maybe this is all he is. Maybe this is all he can ever be.

“You don’t have to be.” Dave takes a slow breath. “That’s the thing. I understand.”

Blaine shakes his head and buries his face against Dave’s chest. He doesn’t want to feel this way. He doesn’t want Dave to understand. He doesn’t want to hear that Dave - Dave who used to be so obsessed with Kurt he tormented him without mercy - feels the exact same broken way he does.

He doesn’t want to think about what that means about the murkiness of his own feelings.

He doesn’t want to think about what that means about Dave and everything they’ve built between them, how they started and where they are now.

He doesn’t want to think at all, because he knows the answers will make him feel even more anguished than he already does, everything twisted and entrapping instead of light and free, a web he doesn’t even know if he wants to get out of anymore.

And that’s the worst part, that Blaine doesn’t know where things turned wrong and how to make things right, and most of him doesn’t even want to figure it out.

“I understand,” Dave says again, a low rumble that makes Blaine’s stomach tighten with despair and unwelcome hope.

“You can try as much as you want, Blaine,” Dave continues, his voice turning dark and giving Blaine nowhere to hide, “but even if you can’t have him, even if he hates you, even if he turns you down, even if you can’t get close enough to touch him again, even if you can only live your dreams in memories and in stories and in people who know more of him than you...”

He cups Blaine’s shoulder again, tight and possessive in a way that Blaine wishes didn’t feel good, didn’t feel like Dave was stealing the air from his lungs and the lightness in his heart, threatening him with a life of being rudderless and adrift if Dave weren’t holding him together.

Blaine tries to take a deep breath and remind himself what’s right, but the way Dave’s words sink into him scares Blaine as much as it thrills him. Maybe he should feel used. Maybe he should feel violated. But deep in his heart, deep where he desperately needs to be filled, he feels _needed_ most of all.

He’s the only person in the entire world who can give Dave what he needs. Him. For once, it’s him. It feels awful. Awful and - to Blaine’s great shame and even greater pleasure - absolutely perfect.

“Believe me,” Dave says, low and sure. The fire in his voice makes Blaine’s heart flutter in his throat, makes his heart burn and soar and crack apart. “I know, Blaine. No matter how you try, no matter how much time has passed, no matter what you do, you can never, ever get over Kurt Hummel.”


End file.
